If you wanted to know details about packages in DB2, we have had to rely on an old, hard to find Redbook for years. Thanks to the efforts of Roger Miller, this hardcopy only Redbook published back in 1993 was made available in softcopy (PDF) form a few years ag0. I wrote a short bit about its resurrection in my March 2006 blog post DB2 for z/OS Packages Redbook. Well, after 15 years of no new information about packages being available, outside of the standard manuals of course, a few folks at SVL lab decided it was time for a packages update. You can now download the draft version of the new Redpaper by Dan Weis and Paolo Bruni titled DB2 for z/OS: Considerations on Small and Large Packages (0.5 MB download size) form the Redbook site. I have read it and it's very well done. With the direction packages are going and DBRMs no longer being bound directly into plans (coming very soon), we can;t have too much information about DB2's packages. Please remember that what is available today is a Draft.

From the Redbook website:

"In this Redpaper, after some introductory background information on packages, we discuss the CPU utilization by packages related to two situations: when a small number of short-running SQL statements out of many SQL statements in a large package are executed and when a set of short-running SQL statements out of many different packages are executed. These two specific situations have become critical in some environments due to the performance difference after migration from DB2Â® V7 to V8. We show the measured CPU across V7, V8 and DB2 9 for z/OS, highlight the improvement provided by DB2 9, and provide some general tips on reducing CPU utilization by packages."

That's it for now. And as always, thank you for stopping by and thanks for your continued support Willie

"I think this redpaper oversells the RELEASE(COMMIT) option. At the SHARE conference in Orlando this Winter Bonnie Baker delivered a really good presentation on locks and packages. In my notes she recommended RELEASE(DEALLOCATE) for all batch. She did not for all online because of potential size issues, but at my shop we don't have that as an issue. But we did recenly move things to RELEASE(DEALLOCATE) and the savings for CPU registered 12-19%, not insignificant at all. Since the only locks held are the intent locks we don't have any concurrency problems, claims, drains, commits all continue to work happily. "